No bread? No beer? No problem! Actually it wasn't quite that easy. To celebrate Passover faithfully actually requires some degree of planning, as I found out soon enough.
A little over a week ago during the Easter Triduum, I was recording a video blog entry each day. During one of them I mentioned something about Passover and how it always encompasses the same weekend as the Easter Triduum. Well, not only did that make me very conscious of the fact that Passover began at Sunset of Good Friday but it also inspired me to try to celebrate it myself, at least from a dietary standpoint.
Part of the problem is that A LOT of things either have wheat or yeast in them, or are processed by using wheat or yeast to carry out some task. Another part of the problem is that I did not finally make a decision to try a Passover-friendly diet until less that 24 hours before it was to begin. When I went grocery shopping earlier that week, I loaded up on food so as to make sure I got through the entire Easter Weekend and then some. So I had a lot of food but a lot of it was definitely NOT Passover-friendly. Even in avoiding these foods, I'm sure I still broke all kinds of rules along the way.
On Saturday morning I decided to check and see if cold cereal was considered "leavened bread." So I looked it up online and also looked at the ingredient list on my cereal box. Cold cereal was ruled out. I ate oatmeal instead - the sole ingredient was whole oats (this was NOT instant "oatmeal"). It might have still been a violation, but the effort was there.
I snack a lot too, often on granola bars. Those were ruled out as well so I snacked instead on peanuts. Well, apparently, dry roasted nuts should be avoided too although fresh nuts are okay. Nevertheless, I continued to snack on dry roasted peanuts for the first few days anyway, probably breaking a rule in the process, and I never did see the fresh shell-covered peanuts in my local grocery store. I'm sure there's a store nearby that has them but maybe it's just not one I set foot in during the last 2 weeks. I mean, the place where I live is in very close proximity to no fewer than 3 supermarkets, 2 of which have the same name. I probably just didn't go to the right one.
Well, I was struggling to finish my Holy Saturday video blog entry and kept running into difficulties. It was getting pretty deep into the afternoon. I generally try to watch one sporting event each weekend and usually that would be football ("soccer") or Boston Bruins' ice hockey. I don't have an elaborate cable package so I either watch ESPN3 on my computer, a network television channel, a Spanish-language channel, or I go to a bar. At any rate, I was not going to plan on being able to watch any match in its entirety on a busy Easter Sunday so it had to be Saturday. To watch nothing would have been a shame because there were some good matches on the docket for this weekend.
When it got too late to catch the beginning of Lazio -v- Napoli, the next in line was Braga -v- Porto. By the time I was finished recording a video that was free of technical glitches, it was too late for the Braga match as well. So I was going to watch the Bruins' final regular season game against the Buffalo Sabres. But that game was on NESN, which I do not have, so I went to the bar down the street to watch it and also have dinner. Eating dinner at home after the game would have been too soon before the Easter Vigil Mass.
Naturally I avoided all the sandwiches, burgers, and wraps. All of the other dishes either came with french fries or rice. Being a fairweather vegetarian, I chose the vegetable stir-fry (a rice dish) over the dishes that could have had french fries instead of rice. Being health-conscious, I probably would have chosen rice for those other dishes anyway. Either way, that was a mistake! Mixed into the rice was a bunch of little, short, thin noodles. I had forgotten that this place does that with their rice, but it had never been an issue before so I never had a reason to notice anyway. I was not about to send this dish back to a Lebanese-American kitchen staff telling them that it's "Passover-unfriendly" when I'm not even Jewish. So I ate it so as to avoid making them throw it away. I realized later that I should have proceeded to order something else, and then boxed the stir-fry with the intention of keeping it in the freezer all week. At this point I could have just decided to give up my attempt to live the Passover after just one day in light of this obvious violation, but I stayed with it. A loss does not mean the season is over.
So I continued on Sunday afternoon by making myself some soup. Usually when I spend a few hours preparing and then cooking a soup, I make enough for 4 meals. These soups typically last me for the better part of a week. But I also remembered when I looked online about Passover that there were a lot of ways a violation could be committed. Sure enough, when I checked the ingredients of the soup base I used, there was yeast extract. Well, I had already prepared the vegetables and opened the cans of beans so I proceeded to finish cooking the soup. But I knew that it would not be right to eat soup for more than half of the week and just chalk it up as a "small mistake." So I did not consume the soup that day even though I had initially planned to. I just stored all 4 servings of it near the back of the refrigerator so that I could consume them after Passover. In the meantime I was left with very few other options so I scavenged a bit. I may have broken a rule anyway just by preparing the soup during Passover.
It had been a while since I ate tofu. Most of what I was eating these past few days was not very satisfying. Tofu would at least fill me up. As a child I used to eat tofu as an afternoon snack all the time when coming home from school. Since tofu has no taste I always garnished it with soy sauce and sesame oil. In recent years, I had not been to diligent about finding a good Chinese or other Asian grocery store that would carry some quality brands of these condiments; preferably brands based in Taiwan, not mainland China, not Japan, and not some country whose cuisine I'm not familiar with. So I just used things I already had in the kitchen such as balsamic vinegar and olive oil. But balsamic vinegar and olive oil just do not seem right on tofu so I decided I would finally search for an Asian grocery store. I passed by one every day to and from a work site I was going to at the time so I checked it out on Monday. They actually had a good selection of condiments, including brands based in Taiwan. But the problem with soy sauce is that almost all soy sauce has leavening in it of some sort. That's good to know, I guess. There was only one brand whose soy sauce did not have leavening in it and it was an organic brand that was most definitely not based in Taiwan or the USA. I won't say who it was. So I decided that revisiting an old childhood snack would not be the way to get myself through Passover.
Later that evening I went to my local supermarket to go on the big shopping spree so as to diversify my Passover-friendly food options at home. Given that I had next to nothing that was Passover-friendly at this point, it was not such a difficult task. Obviously this is a shopping trip I should have done before the end of the previous week except that I did not come up with this whole Passover idea until less than 24 hours before it began. So I got myself some rice cakes consisting of just brown rice and sea salt, no other ingredients. These were for spreading hommus on or dipping into hommus. Eating hommus on its own just seemed a bit weird, not to mention unsatisfying, but that's what I was doing because pita bread is not Passover-friendly. I also loaded up on cottage cheese and tofu. I also got some vegetable soup broth that was different from the soup base I already had but it sure is difficult to find a vegetable soup base, bouillon, or broth that does not have yeast extract. I think I got myself the only 2 brands in existence that do without it. Finally, in anticipation of increased consumption of certain foods in the absence of wheat-infested and yeast-infested foods, I topped off my supply of hommus and greek yogurt with more than my usual quantity. Of course, I resupplied my usual fresh fruit as well. So after all this I could lay off the dry-roasted peanuts for the rest of the week.
The food I had was not filling at all. I noticed that within a few short hours after each meal, I was hungry again. I almost felt like I was fasting again. And then on Saturday when I had both a morning and an evening activity in the Boston area, I stayed around there all day which meant that I would be eating restaurant food again. This time I was cognizant enough to ask and make sure certain ingredients were indeed absent from the food. Nevertheless, even getting to that point is difficult because restaurant menus are dreadfully Passover-unfriendly, especially at places that are fairly cheap and quick such as cafes and pubs. Besides, it seems to me that eating out during Passover would generally be advised against by those in the know. At the very least it would not surprise me one bit if I were to look it up and read something like that somewhere.
So when the Sun came down on Saturday evening, Passover had finally passed over. Passover is not easy. There are a lot of things that would be easy to take for granted until they become issues. Passover may have been even more difficult for me had I done some advance planning as well as some research about the way some foods are processed and then been more meticulous about playing by the rules. I'm sure I racked up all sorts of violations, especially early on. Nevertheless, just like in a true fast, living the Passover forced me to think and to focus. If anything, it gave me some perspective. For those who do this every year, perhaps the progressively increasing familiarity with this routine makes it progressively less burdensome. Still, I do not envy you in the slightest - it DOES require a good deal of effort and thought.
1 John 5: 1-6
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